U.S. Healthcare - Not the best...by a long shot...

This seems timely; the link between how much a country spends per capita on health care and longevity - it's not what you'd think...from a reliable source. If you live in the U.S. be very, very depressed.... Oh, and here's the killer quote, 

"One of the reasons for the underachievement of the US is the large inequality in health spending. ....The US healthcare system is characterized by little access to care for some and very high expenditure on health by others."

Here's the link

"I cannot deny it; it is true."

3 March 1917 To the amazement of the world (and the immense relief of the British in Room 40), at a press conference in Berlin, when asked about the authenticity and validity of the telegram, German Foreign Secretary Zimmermann stated, "I cannot deny it; it is true."

Zimmermann Telegram is published in the U.S. "The nation gasped"

28 February 1917 Secretary of State Robert Lansing leaks the existence and contents of the Zimmermann telegram to reporter E. M. Hood of the Associated Press. The AP puts the entire story out on it's wire and it is picked up by major newspapers across the United States.

1 March 1917 The Zimmermann telegram, including its contents, the story told by the British to Ambassador Page (not the whole truth of how they acquired it), the original telegram sent over the American diplomatic cable, and the original from the telegraph office in Mexico City are published across the United States. According to David Kahn in The Codebreakers, "The nation gasped." (Kahn, p. 293)  The House of Representatives immediately votes to arm U.S. merchant vessels. President Wilson's peace initiatives are rapidly deteriorating and talk of war increases markedly.

The Americans finally see the Zimmermann Telegram

20 February 1917 The American Star Line freighter Algonquin, loaded with about $1.25M in food stuffs leaves New York Harbor bound for London. She would become the next American ship sunk by the Germans.

24 February 1917 U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Walter Page having been given the copy of the decrypted telegram by Admiral Hall, sends the decrypted Zimmermann telegram to the U.S. State Department in Washington.

27 February 1917 U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing shows President Wilson the original telegram sent by the Germans over the American diplomatic cable to Bernstorff in Washington on 16 January. Lansing also shows the President the decrypted telegram received from Walter Page in London; the decryption is of the telegram sent by Bernstorff from Washington to Mexico City in the German Diplomatic 13040 code. Wilson is not happy. He authorizes Lansing to release the telegram to the American press. Lansing calls in the Washington correspondent of the Associated Press and gives him the details of the telegram on 28 February 1917.

The Americans See the Zimmermann Telegram for the first time

22 February 1917 Admiral Hall shows the decrypted Zimmermann telegram to Edward Bell, the intelligence liaison in the U.S. Embassy in London. The next day, 23 February 1917, Foreign Secretary Balfour formally delivers the telegram to U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Walter Page. Page and Bell prepare a message to the State Department and the President.

The British finish their work on the Zimmermann Telegram.

19 February 1917 Room 40 completes its decryption of the Zimmermann Telegram. The final message that von Bernstorff forwarded to von Eckhardt on January 19th  reads:

"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare.  We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral.  In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis:  make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.  The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.  Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace."  Signed, ZIMMERMANN.

The next step for Admiral Hall is to show the telegram to the Americans at the U.S. Embassy and convince them of the authenticity of the telegram.

The sinking of the Lyman M. Law

12 February 1917 A four-masted U.S. schooner the Lyman M. Law, carrying a cargo of wood from Stockton, Maine to Palermo, Italy was stopped and sunk by the German submarine U-35 early on a bright, sunny Monday morning. The Lyman M. Law was about 25 miles off the coast of Sardinia and near the port of Cagliari when she was attacked. The Germans allowed the crew to abandon ship before sinking the Law. (see http://uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/3777.html ). This was the second U.S. merchant vessel sunk by the Germans since the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February.

Zimmermann Telegram: the last piece falls in place

10 February 1917 British Director of Naval Intelligence Admiral Hall receives a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram that was stolen by a British agent from a telegraph office in Mexico City. The last piece of the puzzle, this provides the copy that Admiral Hall can give to the Americans and hide the fact that the British intercepted and decoded the original. 

Because this version of the telegram (from Count von Bernstorff in Washington to German Envoy Heinrich von Eckardt in Mexico City) is encrypted using the older 13040 German diplomatic code, Hall can safely show it to the Americans without revealing the British are now partially breaking the new 0075 code.

Zimmermann worried; Pershing leaves Mexico; Hall delivers the Telegram

5 February 1917 German Foreign Minister Alfred Zimmermann telegraphs German Resident Minister Heinrich von Eckardt in Mexico City again, urging him to conclude an arrangement with the Mexican government immediately. 

On the same day, the last American troops of the "Punitive Expedition," led by General John J. Pershing, leave Mexico. 

In London, British Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall is finally ready and takes the now mostly decrypted Zimmermann telegram across the street from Room 40 to the Foreign Office and delivers it to Lord Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

U.S. Severs diplomatic relations with German Empire

3 February 1917 The U.S. severs diplomatic relations with Germany after the sinking of the American steamship Housatonic. In the next two months the Germans sink over 500 ships in the Atlantic, including 6 American ships, two in February and 4 in March. Their plan is to starve the British and get them to sue for peace within 6 months, leaving the Germans free to just fight the French.  

Ambassador von Bernstorff is called to the State Department late in the afternoon on 3 February and Secretary of State Lansing hands him back his passport and orders the embassy closed and all the staff expelled. Within 2 days von Bernstorff takes ship back to Germany, continuing to defend his efforts at peace. The U.S. and Germany edge closer and closer to war.

Germans resume unrestricted submarine warfare

1 February 1917 The Germans resume unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Two days later an American steamer, the Housatonic is sunk in the north Atlantic, 20 miles south of Bishop Rock off the southwestern coast of England by the U-53. (All hands survived.) The Housatonic was carrying a cargo of wheat.

Germany's Warning - too little too late

31 January 1917 German Ambassador Heinrich von Bernstorff visits American Secretary of State Robert Lansing late on the afternoon of Wednesday 31 January and informs him of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the German Empire  8 hours before it is to start.

Peace without victory - Wilson's last try

22 January 1917 President Wilson delivers his famous "peace without victory' speech to Congress. It is his last plea to the belligerents in Europe to stop the fighting. Within 9 days events beyond Wilson's control will intensify the push of the US into the conflict in Europe.

The Zimmermann Telegram arrives in Mexico

19 January 1917 Count von Bernstorff transmits the Zimmermann telegram to von Eckhardt, the German envoy in Mexico City in the older and simpler German 13040 code. The newer code 0075 was being sent to German embassies one at a time, and von Eckhardt in Mexico City did not yet have the newer diplomatic code.

This was a break for the British because they had completely broken the 13040 code earlier in the war (the code had been in use since 1908). And since the 13040 code was older and known to the Americans, if they could intercept Bernstorff's telegram to Mexico City, the British could safely show the telegram from Bernstorff to von Eckhardt to the Americans without giving away the fact that they'd also nearly broken code 0075.

Later, in early February, this is exactly what the British did.

The British begin work on the Zimmermann Telegram

17 January 1917 The intercepted telegram sent by Alfred Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office to the German embassies in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City is delivered to the British Naval cryptographic office, Room 40.

The message itself is in two parts; the first part are instructions to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador to the United States on how to forward the message in the second part to the German Envoy in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt and also informs von Bernstorff of the German's intention to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. The second part is the Zimmermann Telegram everyone knows.

The British codebreakers in Room 40, William Montgomery and Nigel de Grey, immediately begin to decrypt the message, although because they have not completely solved the new German code, No. 0075, the decryption remains incomplete for several weeks. Code 0075, introduced in mid-1916, is a two-part code of 10,000 code groups. Despite this the British learn that its message outlines plans for an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States. According to the scheme, Germany would provide tactical support while Mexico would benefit by expanding into the American Southwest, retrieving territories that had once been part of Mexico.

The Zimmermann Telegram, Part I

I'll be writing a number of blog entries related to the 100th anniversary of the American participation in World War I. We'll start at the logical place - with the Zimmermann Telegram.

16 January 1917 The Germans send the Zimmermann Telegram from Berlin to the German Ambassador to the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff via the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. (Yes, the Americans sent the actual telegram from Berlin to Washington. How ironic.) The telegram apparently also goes via wireless from the German radio transmitter at Nauen outside of Berlin to the American receiving station at Sayville, Long Island, NY (although William Friedman and Charles Mendelsohn, in their monograph on the Zimmermann telegram dispute this),  and also via the Swedish government to South America and thence to Washington. It is intercepted via all three routes by the British. When decrypted, the telegram reads:

"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare.  We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral.  In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis:  make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.  The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.  Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace."  Signed, ZIMMERMANN.

100th Anniversary of the Kingsland Munitions Factory Fire and Explosion

Kingsland Burns (an excerpt from Codes, Ciphers and Spies by John F Dooley)

The Canadian Car and Foundry Company was based in Montreal, Canada and in early 1915 the company signed a contract with Russia for $83,000,000 to supply artillery shells for the Russian army. Because they didn’t have enough capacity at their Canadian plants for this contract and all their other war work, the company built an assembly plant in Kingsland, (now Lyndhurst) New Jersey. The Kingsland plant opened in the spring of 1916 and by early 1917 had 38 buildings on the site, all surrounded by a six-foot high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. All the employees entered and exited the plant through a single gate and searches were common. Explosives, shell casings, shell warheads, and fuses were shipped to the plant and assembled there and ultimately loaded on transports in New York harbor and shipped to Russia. By 1917 the plant could produce upwards of 3,000,000 shells per month. (Landau 1937, p. 93)

A little after 3:00PM on the afternoon of January 11, 1917 Theodore Wozniak was at his bench working on cleaning shells. He apparently spilled some gasoline and suddenly a small fire broke out. The fire spread quickly across Wozniak’s bench and leapt to adjacent benches. The men in the building ran as the fire engulfed the entire building within minutes. The fire spread to other buildings, setting off the explosives stored there in a series of titanic explosions heard in New York City and as far north as Westchester County and as far east as Long Island. The fire and explosions went on for more than four hours. According to Witcover, “The Kingsland plant itself was completely destroyed, with estimated damages of seventeen million dollars. A later inventory indicated that 275,000 loaded shells and more than a million unloaded shells, nearly half a million time fuses, 300,000 cartridge cases, and 100,000 detonators, plus huge amounts of TNT were destroyed in the fire.” (Witcover 1989, p. 193) The only saving grace was that no one was killed. All 1,400 workers managed to get through the fence and escape across a frozen marsh to safety.

Suspicion that the fire was intentionally set surfaced immediately. Several of Wozniak’s co-workers in Building 30 testified that the fire had started at his workbench. Wozniak himself admitted as much, but claimed that a spark from a rotating machine designed to hold the shell casings while they were being cleaned was the culprit. No one, however, could say whether Wozniak had deliberately started the fire, so he was never charged. Wozniak disappeared shortly after the fire and was not found again until more than a decade later when the American and German Mixed Claims Commission was looking for evidence of complicity in the fire. And it would be a decade after that, in 1939, that the German-American Mixed Claims Commission would finally decide that Hilken, Hinsch, Herrmann, and Wozniak were indeed responsible for the devastation at Kingsland. (Mixed Claims Commission 1940, pp. 308-310) The key evidence in their decision was not any documentation written before the event, but a message that Fred Herrmann sent to Paul Hilken from Mexico City in April 1917. This message was in code and written in two parts. First Herrmann wrote the text of his message on several consecutive pages of the January 1917 issue of Blue Book magazine using lemon juice as an invisible ink. The lemon juice disappears when dry and can be revealed using heat; Hilken used a hot iron to reveal the message. (Macrakis 2014, p. 25) In the message Herrmann used a numerical book cipher to hide the names of various people mentioned in the message. These numbers embedded in the cipher message were always four digit numbers and were constructed as follows. The first digit of the number was dropped. The remaining three digits were then reversed and these numbers indicated a page in the magazine. On these pages, over certain letters were tiny holes made with a pin that spelled out the name of the person or place in the message. If one holds the page up to a bright light, the pinpricks can be read and the rest of the message deciphered. The entire deciphered and translated message is:

Have seen 1755 [Eckardt] he is suspicious of me Can't convince him I come from 1915 [Marguerre] and 1794 [Nadolny] Have told him all reference 2584 [Hinsch] and I 2384 [Deutschland], 7595 [Jersey City Terminal], 3106 [Kings- land], 4526 [Savannah], and 8545 [Tonys Lab] he doubts me on account of my bum 7346 [German] Confirm to him thru your channels all OK and my mission here I have no funds 1755 [Eckardt] claims he is short of money Send by bearer US 25000. Have you heard from Willie. Have wired 2336 [Hildegarde] but no answer Be careful of her and connections. Where are 2584 [Hinsch] and 9107 [Carl Ahrendt} Tell 2584 [Hinsch] to come here I expect to go north but he can locate me thru 1755 [Eckardt] I don’t trust 9107 [Carl Ahrendt], 3994 [Kristoff], 1585 [Wolfgang] and that 4776 [Hoboken] bunch, If cornered they might get us in Dutch with authorities See that 2584 [Hinsch] brings with him all who might implicate us. tell him 7386 [Siegel] is with me. Where is 6394 [Carl Dilger] he worries me Remember past experience Has 2584 [Hinsch] seen 1315 [Wozniak] Tell him to fix that up. If you have any difficulties see 8165 [Phil Wirth Nat Arts Club] Tell 2584 [Hinsch] his plan O.K. Am in close touch with major and influential Mexicans Can obtain old 3175 [cruiser] for 50000 West Coast What will you do now with America in the War Are you coming here or going to South America Advise you drop everything and leave the States regards to 2784 [Hoppenburg] Sei nicht dum mach doch wieder bumm bumm bumm. Most important send funds Bearer will relate experiences and details Greetings (Landau 1937, p. 245)

           

The Kingsland explosion was the last big effort of the German spy network in Baltimore. Less than a month after the Kingsland explosion, on February 1, 1917, Germany would resume unrestricted submarine warfare and the United States would break diplomatic relations with Germany. Later, in March, the Zimmerman telegram would be released and the United States would declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917. The saboteurs would all disappear soon after that.

References

Landau, Captain Henry. 1937. The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of German Sabotage in America. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Macrakis, Kristie. 2014. Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to Al-Qaeda. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Mixed claims commission (United States and Germany). 1940. Opinions and Decisions in the Sabotage Claims Handed down June 15, 1939, and October 30, 1939 and Appendix. Washington D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015073384821.

Witcover, Jules. 1989. Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America - 1914 - 1917. New York, NY: Algonquin Books.

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